3.5 stars. This book had been sitting on my Kindle forever, and I'm so glad I finally moved it to the top of my reading list! I thoroughly enjoyed these humorous essays on aging. I finished the book in one sitting, which says a lot about how entertaining it was.

3.5 stars

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter.”

This was a fun essay collection. I listened to the audio, narrated by Ephron, and very much liked her delivery and dry sense of humor.

PS. This is where I admit I didn’t realize she was such a prolific screenplay writer. I mean, I obviously know the films, I just didn’t know she wrote them.

Just the right book for a woman of a certain age (or any age). Ephron is funny and good-natured, never feeling sorry for herself as she points out the absurdities in how women try to turn back the clock, performing ‘maintenance’ as if they were half-broken jalopies, only just holding together. (This alongside Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End would provide a good balanced tone.)

This collection is also, somewhat surprisingly, very wise on the subject of reading. From “Blind as a Bat”:

“Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”

The excellent “On Rapture” essay is also all about reading. Ephron names The Woman in White “the most rapture-inducing book of my adult life,” one that kept her embarrassingly preoccupied on a film set. Luckily, the experience is repeatable: “the state of rapture I experience when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read, but it doesn’t happen every time or even every other time, and when it does happen, I’m truly beside myself.” (You can read the whole essay on Oprah’s website.)

Multi-talented Nora Ephron was a journalist, director, and author. In her heyday Ephron wrote the screenplays for some very popular movies including 'Julie and Julia', 'You've Got Mail', 'Sleepless in Seattle', 'When Harry Met Sally', and 'Silkwood.'


Nora Ephron

This audiobook - read by the author - contains a collection of humorous essays written when Ephron was 60 years old...and stopped having birthdays. In fact Ephron notes that, upon publication of this book, she'll have been 60 for five years (ha ha ha

No todo tiene que ser un libro

Hay millones de autores de libros, una minoría tiene éxito, otra ultraminoría es, además, tan popular que es convocada a escribir columnas semanales en los diarios. Pero hay una minoría aún más extraña, es la de los autores populares que escriben columnas semanales a los que en algún momento se las juntan en un libro. Bueno, a veces, todas esas columnas juntas no hacen un libro. Este me parece el caso.

Bien, entiendo que después del bombazo de la versión en español de las pseudomemorias "No me acuerdo de nada", los dueños de los derechos de Nora Ephron soplaron el polvo acumulado en los contratos y se pusieron a editar sus libros anteriores, algunos salen por Anagrama, otros por Asteroide. Yo leí dos de estos, pero ninguno tiene la gracia, el humor y un resultado acabado como el recomendadísimo "No me acuerdo de nada".

Me llevé este libro a la sala de espera de un médico que sabía que iba a ser larga. Mi única referencia, además del buen antecedente, es que a Miqueridaesposa le había gustado mucho y a Miveneradasuegra nada de nada, al punto de abandonarlo a las pocas páginas. Al terminar un capítulo le texteé a Miqueridaesposa "es un embole esto, estoy del lado de tu mamá". "Leé los últimos dos, que están buenos", me respondió. Sí, es verdad, los últimos dos están mejor que los anteriores, pero tampoco para tanto. A mí, el capítulo que más me gustó es el que habla sobre su vida en un edificio histórico de Nueva York y el cambio que se produce una vez que se libera el precio del alquiler. Es muy interesante porque, una vez que los propietarios pueden hacer más dinero, el edificio es restaurado y mejorado notablemente. Si yo fuera su editor (y si ella estuviera viva, claro), le pediría un poco más de ese tema.

Pero ese es el único capítulo interesante, de los demás, a pesar de haberlos leído hace dos días, ya no me acuerdo de nada.

==

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Gracias, te espero

Sant

3.5 rounded up.
This book is witty for sure and relatable at times but not always. An easy light read for me.

Was Nora Ephron a talented writer? Yes. But it's hard to like a book where I can identify with close to ZERO of the ideas presented. I can't identify with spending three hours twice a week getting my hair done. I haven't thrown out my furniture on a whim and bought everything in beige just because it seemed fun. Going through a $20 bottle of bath oil every week is never something I've even ever imagined. It just seemed like a deluge of problems that I can't identify with because I'm not privileged or wealthy. If these "Thoughts on Being a Woman" were more like essays rather than ragged paragraphs alternating between detailing the life of a privileged person and complaining about such, I perhaps could have seen the value in this book. Occasionally I like a glance into this kind of life, but not this one.

This was one of the worst books I have ever read. There was nothing funny, witty or amusing about this book and if it hadn’t been picked by my book club to read this month, I would have stopped reading after the first couple pages. It was full of superficial nonsense and every chapter, except for ONE small paragraph about reading, was completely a waste of my time and energy. The author is self involved and clearly knows nothing outside her own world to be able to relate to most women. I would not recommend this book EVER!

The author went to a lunch in honor of a woman released from 12 years in prison for murdering her lover because he was moving on to a younger model. I looked up this lady, she wasn’t innocent and released because she was exonerated. Her sentence was commuted and then she was released early by the governor at the time.

The author. Went to a lunch. Honoring a murderer.

Her neck isn’t what she should be feeling bad about.

DNF at page 36.

1, do people have no morals today, star???

Ephron is better known as a screen writer, in particular for When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, films with some very funny moments and strong observations about the human psyche and relationships. In this little book, she turns the spotlight back on herself. It is a collection of articles and essays with titles such as I Hate My Handbag and What I Wish I'd Known as well as other things that affect a aging Manhattenite.

It is written as a fairly honest account of her life, but whilst it is honest, it is also a bit dull. She is fairly vain, concerned about keeping her hair an unnatural colour, and getting through vast quantities of beauty products, whilst acknowledging that they don’t work as promised. She is also concerned with her place in the metropolis that is New York, having the right apartment and other frankly frivolous concerns. She does contemplate death too, realising that as she moves through her sixties friends suffer from all manner of illnesses, and she slowly looses them to the grim reaper.

It did have a certain charm though and she is obviously a proficient writer, hence the two stars. But my main flaw with it is that for a supposedly funny book, I didn’t laugh once.

I feel really angry about this book, I kind of expected something with more substance from a journalist and respected screen writer. It was such a shock to find so many frilly, frivoulous and vacuous and vain scribblings here, I would have thought this had been ghostwritten for the likes of Katie Price et al.

There is so much to being a woman ( or person, no need to segregrate the sexes) than worrying about what your neck looks like as you age. Or justifying a stonking rent deposit/rise to the number of lattes you drink a day.

I have stopped reading this fluff because my blood is boiling and life is too short.

Don't read this, spend time with friends/family, go for a walk, reconnect with nature, enjoy life and ageing, it's a sign you've lived life well and had fun doing it!!!!